Wolitzer Meg Quotes & Sayings

you sometimes feel totally unready for them, or even that they're — Meg Wolitzer

Because friend was encompassing, and here it encompassed so much, including the contradictions. — Meg Wolitzer

Fawn face, the expression a deer makes not when it's caught in headlights but when it catches a human looking at it in wonder. The deer looks back, acknowledging not only its own terror but its own grace, and it shows off for a moment in front of the human. It flirts. — Meg Wolitzer

New teachers were just a part of life, for a few days after one arrived, squawks of interest were emitted from various corners, but then they died away as the teacher was absorbed like everyone else ... before you knew it, the fresh ones seemed to have been teaching there forever too, or else they didn't last very long, and were gone before you'd gotten to know them. — Meg Wolitzer

The mind plays tricks on itself in order to stay in one piece. — Meg Wolitzer

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it. — Meg Wolitzer

She understood that it had never just been about talent: it had also always been about money. Ethan was brilliant at what he did, and he might well have made it even if Ash's father hadn't encouraged him, but it really helped that Ethan had grown up in a sophisticated city, and that he had married into a wealthy family. Ash was talented, but not all that talented. This was the thing that no one said, not once. But of course it was fortunate that Ash didn't have to worry about money while trying to think about art. Her wealthy childhood had given her a head start, and now Ethan had picked up where her childhood had left off. — Meg Wolitzer

It's funny how you can go for a long time in life not needing someone, and then you meet them and you suddenly need them all the time — Meg Wolitzer

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose. — Meg Wolitzer

Though Jonah felt transfixed inside his own childhood, no one else saw him as a child. He was already over the hump of middle age, heading rapidly toward those year that no one like to speak of. The best parts had already passed for people Jonah's age. By now you were meant to have become what you would finally be, and to gracefully and unobtrusively stay in that state for the rest of your life. — Meg Wolitzer

And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it toward you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just more pain. But there's always something else at the end; something at least a little different. You never know what that thing will be, but it's there. — Meg Wolitzer

Edie was a gorgeous, avant-garde girl back in the day when that could be a full-time occupation, but in marriage she slowly became less wild. To Manny's great disappointment, though, her domestic skills didn't rise to the fore as her sexual and artistic ones receded. — Meg Wolitzer

Well," said Ash, and she got out of her own bed and came to sit beside Jules. "I've always sort of felt that you prepare yourself over the course of your whole life for the big moments, you know? But when they happen, you sometimes feel totally unready for them, or even that they're not what you thought. And that's what makes them strange. The reality is really different from the fantasy. — Meg Wolitzer

People could not get enough of what they had lost, even if they no longer wanted it. — Meg Wolitzer

Because when you're young, you don't really believe you'll ever be anything other than young. — Meg Wolitzer

Joe once told me he felt a little sorry for women, who only got husbands. Husbands tried to help by giving answers, being logical, stubbornly applying force as though it were a glue gun. Or else they didn't try to help at all, for they were somewhere else entirely, out walking in the world by themselves. But wives, oh wives, when they weren't being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease. — Meg Wolitzer

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things. — Meg Wolitzer

Twitter. You know what it is? Termites with microphones. — Meg Wolitzer

But maybe in life, she thought later, there are not only moments of strangeness but moments of knowledge, which don't appear at the time as knowledge at all — Meg Wolitzer

But here was where the question of talent became slippery, for who could say whether Spirit-in-the-Woods had ever pulled incipient talent out of a kid and activated it, or whether the talent had been there all along and would have come out even without this place. — Meg Wolitzer

The world of law was filled with the fallen, but theater wasn't. No one ever "fell back" onto theater. You had to really, really want it. — Meg Wolitzer

When you located someone from the past online, it was like finding that person trapped behind glass in the permanent collection of a museum. You knew they were still there, and it seemed to you as if they would stay there forever. — Meg Wolitzer

When you lived a certain kind of life, pushed along by good colleges and internships and jobs and a shared, tranquil neighborhood and a world of privilege in which your child overlapped, you were inevitably part of a long chain of connections. All of them could help one another; the possibilities were there if they wanted them, though many of them didn't seem to want them anymore, or maybe they had somehow forgotten they had once wanted them. — Meg Wolitzer

If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book. — Meg Wolitzer

What if she'd turned down the lightly flung invitation and went about her life, thudding obliviously along like a drunk person, a blind person, a moron, someone who thinks that the small packet of happiness she carries is enough. — Meg Wolitzer

The train came, and Jules Jacobson stepped on and thought: I am the loneliest person in this subway car. — Meg Wolitzer

Oh tragedy, oh tragedy, the boy said to himself, but he was smiling a little. Oh joy, oh joy. Hearts and stars exploded in the darkness above their heads. — Meg Wolitzer

Jill told him that he just didn't understand what it meant to have been so promising your whole life and now to be so disappointing in the end. — Meg Wolitzer

You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression. — Meg Wolitzer

There was no life Dennis burned to live except, it seemed, a life that wasn't depressed. — Meg Wolitzer

My job does not define me. — Meg Wolitzer

It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life. — Meg Wolitzer

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking. — Meg Wolitzer

Maybe googling people kills them ... You keep looking them up to see where they are, until one day you look them up and they're dead. — Meg Wolitzer

Ethan Figman, thick bodied, unusually ugly, his features appearing a little bit flattened, as if pressed against a mime's invisible glass wall, sat with his mouth slack and a record album in his lap. — Meg Wolitzer

The only option for a creative person was constant motion - a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn't do it any longer. — Meg Wolitzer

Everyone simply had to wait patiently in order to lose the people they loved one by one, all the while acting as if they weren't waiting for that at all. — Meg Wolitzer

Writers need light. They always tell you this, as though they're parched, as though they're plants, as though the page they're working on would look completely different with a southern exposure. — Meg Wolitzer

Nothing. That was a nostalgia kiss," he said. "It's sepia colored. People in that kiss are . . . wearing stovepipe hats . . . and children are rolling hoops down the street, and eating penny candy. — Meg Wolitzer

Plus, constantly worrying about money is *boring*. Use your brain ... to be creative. — Meg Wolitzer

Closure, that impossible thing that no one had ever experienced in life, because there always seemed to be a little aperture, a slit of light. — Meg Wolitzer

Cilantro was briefly everywhere, creating miniflurries of conversation about whether or not you liked cilantro, which invariably included someone in the room saying, I can't stand cilantro. It tastes like soap. — Meg Wolitzer

When do I stop? When I'm tewnty-five? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty? Or right this minute? Nobody tell s you how long you should keep doing something before you give up forever. — Meg Wolitzer

all the stars out there, she thought, and all the worlds those stars existed in; and all the non-stars too, the strivers, everyone worried about their own careers, their own trajectories, how it looked, what it meant, what other people thought of them. It was just too much to take in; it was just so sickening and unnecessary. Leave success and fame and money and an extraordinary — Meg Wolitzer

Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us. — Meg Wolitzer

If someone said 'diametrically,' could 'opposed' be far behind? — Meg Wolitzer

The rest of life - that imperfect thing - waiting. — Meg Wolitzer

Is there anything sadder than the scrawniest little piece of uneaten chicken at a dinner party?"
"Hmm," said Jules. "Yes. The Holocaust. — Meg Wolitzer

I've always been drawn to writing for young readers. The books that I read growing up remain in my mind very strongly. — Meg Wolitzer

You want to know whether the problems that you teenagers feel - will they follow you over the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching? Is that what you are asking me?"
Goodman shifted in discomfort. "Something like that," he said.
"Yes," said the counselor in a suddenly plangent voice. "Always they will be aching. I wish I could tell you something else, but I wouldn't be telling the truth. My wise and gentle friends, this is the way it will be from now on."
No one could say anything. "We are so, so fucked," Jules finally said ... — Meg Wolitzer

Stellar Plains, New Jersey, was a town that got mentioned whenever there was an article called "The Fifty Most Livable Suburbs in America." Unlike most suburbs, this one was considered progressive. Though the turnpike that ran through it was punctuated by carpet-remnant outlets and tire wholesalers, and even an unsettling, windowless store no one had ever been to, advertising DVDS AND CHINESE SPECIALTY ITEMS, Main Street was quaint and New Englandy, with a cosmopolitan slant. There was an excellent bookstore, Chapter and Verse, at a moment when bookstores around the country were making way for cell-phone stores. — Meg Wolitzer

Jealousy was essentially "I want what you have," while envy was "I want what you have, but I also want to take it away so you can't have it. — Meg Wolitzer

You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you'd given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn't know the outcome for a long time. — Meg Wolitzer

We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one. — Meg Wolitzer

The love between a brother and sister just over a year apart in age held fast. It wasn't twinship, and it wasn't romance, but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand. — Meg Wolitzer

The food was bad but the conversation was vigorous as they sat and talked about many of the campers — Meg Wolitzer

Having children had knocked it all into a different arrangement. The minute you had children, you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. — Meg Wolitzer

When I wrote 'The Interestings,' I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this. — Meg Wolitzer

I have never been much of a researcher — Meg Wolitzer

Maybe she had "no more books left inside her," as people often sorrowfully say about writers, envisioning the imagination as a big pantry, either well stocked with goods or else wartime-empty. — Meg Wolitzer

This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it ... — Meg Wolitzer

How different this was, she thought, from the way Ethan had been with her. Ethan had said exactly what he felt; he hadn't tried to hide any of it. He had presented himself before her, letting her know that he was offering himself up, and did she want him? And when she'd said no, he hadn't pretended that this wasn't what he'd meant at all; he'd simply said, let's try again. So they had tried. And though at the end of the failed experiment there were no hard feelings, he'd finally admitted he would always be a little wounded by her rejection. "Just a tiny amount," he'd said. "But it will last my whole life. — Meg Wolitzer

Sometimes you think people will be around forever, and then you lose them with no warning at all. — Meg Wolitzer

Then it wouldn't be long before they all found themselves shocked and sad to be fully grown into their thicker, finalized adult selves with almost no chance for reinvention. — Meg Wolitzer

In the apartment, the answering machine blinked fiercely, two gnats drag-raced around the apparently sweet, rotting hole of the kitchen drain, and life was difficult once again, and familiar, and a disappointment. — Meg Wolitzer

Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones. — Meg Wolitzer

Parents should be completely dull and ordinary and predictable. You want their relationship to be stable and incredibly boring, as though you would kill yourself if you had to be in that marriage. Neither — Meg Wolitzer

The students lurked on the edges of their teachers' lives for years, and brought bulletins from their own lives, which over time began to include lovers, ambitions, an upward trajectory. — Meg Wolitzer

For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force. — Meg Wolitzer

In 'The Interestings' I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away. — Meg Wolitzer

To be anorexic ... she thought, amounted to wanting to shed yourself of some of the imperfect mosaic of pieces that made you who you were. She could understand that now for, maybe underneath that desquamated self you would locate a new version. — Meg Wolitzer

I guess I feel like grief is this huge part of everything," I say in a burst. "But you're supposed to act like it's not. — Meg Wolitzer

Books light the fire - whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in. — Meg Wolitzer

What does a woman have to do to be seen as a serious person?"
"Be a man, I guess," Ethan said ... — Meg Wolitzer

But you can't say that what you learn in English class doesn't matter. That great writing doesn't make a difference. I'm — Meg Wolitzer

People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness. — Meg Wolitzer

Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down. But a mother never should. — Meg Wolitzer

illustrations of anthropomorphic piles of resin with dialogue bubbles above them: "Hello there, I'm Frankincense. Well, technically I'm Frankincense's monster, but everyone gets that wrong." One — Meg Wolitzer

And it was true that if you categorized people by which Disney character they were, then Jonah would always be Bambi. Motherless, graceful, unobtrusive. Ethan
Jiminy Cricket, the annoying little conscience ... just look at Ash. In the Disney hierarchy she was Snow White ... He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her. — Meg Wolitzer

You got caught up in some fantasy, and now you can't see anything at all. — Meg Wolitzer

Part of the beauty of love was that you didn't need to explain it to anyone else. You could refuse to explain. With love, apparently you didn't necessarily feel the need to explain anything at all. — Meg Wolitzer

Does [your music] have to be a job? And as for your actual job ... do you have to think of [it] as a consolation prize? ... What if you just *played*? Isn't it possible you'd also like your job more, because you wouldn't think of it as something that's secretly had to replace this other thing? — Meg Wolitzer

But, she knew, you didn't have to marry your soulmate, and you didn't even have to marry an Interesting. You didn't always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting. — Meg Wolitzer

Having clients still seemed a little unnatural, though; it made Jules feel that she was a businessperson, someone in, say, consulting, that vague field that she'd never really understood, though over the years through Ethan and Ash, she and Dennis had met people who made their livings this way. No one wanted to be a patient anymore; everyone wanted to be a client. More to the point, everyone wanted to be a consultant. — Meg Wolitzer

They should hand out vibrators if they're going to demand so much of you that you can't find time for a private life. — Meg Wolitzer

Oh boo hoo, everyone's life was hard, and if you'd survived the hardship, why write about it? Survival itself was enough. — Meg Wolitzer

Everyone needs a wife; even wives need wives. Wives tend, they hover. Their ears are twin sensitive instruments, satellites picking up the slightest scrape of dissatisfaction. Wives bring broth, we bring paper clips, we bring ourselves and our pliant, warm bodies. We know just what to say to the men who for some reason have a great deal of trouble taking consistent care of themselves or anyone else. "Listen," we say. "Everything will be okay." And then, as if our lives depend on it, we make sure it is. — Meg Wolitzer

Jules told them, "I used to be a camper here myself," but she was confronted with a squeal of feedback, and even when she repeated her words, she saw that it didn't matter to them that she, a middled-aged woman with a sweater draped over her T-shirt and the kind of softened, undefined features that their mothers shared, had once been a camper here. They didn't care, or even really believe it. Because if they did believe it, then they would have had to think that one day they too would become softened and undefined. — Meg Wolitzer

But the loss of possibilities was always undeniably painful. — Meg Wolitzer

Words matter. All semester, we were looking for the words to say what we needed to say. We were all looking for our voice. — Meg Wolitzer

We each have only one voice. And the world is so loud. Sometimes I think that the quiet ones have figured out that the best way to get other people's attention is not to shout, but to whisper. Which makes everyone listen a little harder. — Meg Wolitzer

You are the only one I can trust about this, Ash said. Which was maybe just another version of what Cathy Kiplinger had said to Jules: you are weak. — Meg Wolitzer

It wasn't easy to understand how the love between two other people could diminish you. If those two people were still accessible to you, if they called you all the time, if they asked you to come into the city for the weekend as you'd always done, then why should you feel, suddenly, intensely lonely? — Meg Wolitzer

Everyone basically has one aria to sing over their entire life, and this one is hers. — Meg Wolitzer

Sometimes it's easier to tell ourselves a story. — Meg Wolitzer

I think having the knowledge, plus the experiences you've lived through, make you definitely not fragile. They make you brave. — Meg Wolitzer

I might have things to look forward to again, things I can't even imagine yet. — Meg Wolitzer

No, of course not. I just feel content," she said carefully.
"That's an old person's word," said Ethan. — Meg Wolitzer

...the Iraq war was the Ishtar of wars. — Meg Wolitzer

If you hold on, if you force yourself as hard as you can to find some kind of patience in the middle of all your impatience, things can change. — Meg Wolitzer